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People don’t usually consider how dangerous being a bus driver can be, but one lucky man has just found out after escaping being killed by a tub of glue. The 60-year-old was nearly killed on the M80 Saturday evening when a 10kg tub of glue was thrown onto his single-decker from an overhead bridge. It smashed through the bus’s windscreen and hit him. No passengers were on the bus at the time.

The bus driver lost all control over the bus after the tub of adhesive struck the steering column. The incident happened at junction six northbound on the M80 at around 9:50pm. However, he was able to slow the bus down and bring it to a stop on the side of the motorway. Luckily, he was able to survive the incident with only minor injuries, while he was very shaken.

It’s believed that that the tub of glue was stolen from a nearby building site. Strathclyde Police Chief Inspector Glen Bland says that saying it was pure luck that stopped this incident from turning into something much worse is no understatement. The driver considers himself lucky that he wasn’t severely injured or killed because of a totally senseless act on one of the busiest roads in Scotland. It’s a credit to the driver that he was able to avoid other vehicles and make the bus stop at the side of the motorway.

Officers are going over CCTV footage to identify the person responsible for the senseless act. They say it’s possible the 10kg tub of glue was stolen from a building site in nearby Dowanfield Road. Bland said that it’s important they trace the culprit for doing such a dangerous thing. He’s appealing to motorists who were on the M80 Saturday night to get in touch with him if they saw anyone on the bridge near junction six. He also appealed to anyone who may have seen someone hanging around the Dowanfield Road area or carrying a large white plastic tub to contact him.

This definitely isn’t the first time that someone has dropped something onto a motorist’s vehicle from an overhead bridge and onto a Scottish motorway. There were several incidents like this last year. In December, the windscreen on a van was smashed when something was thrown off a bridge and onto the M8 in West Lothian.

Before that, two other vehicles were damaged by objects thrown off another bridge on the same motorway. A car roof was damaged and a van windscreen smashed as the vehicles passed under the B792 Blackburn to Bathgate bridge – there were no injuries in either incident. The windscreen of a lorry was also cracked in September 2011 after some teens threw a rock from a bridge and onto the M9 as the driver headed toward the St Ninians area in Stirling.

These incidents followed one in England last year that involved a woman driver being seriously injured after a two vehicles were hit with a concrete block on the A12 in Essex. Before this, a shopping trolley was dropped onto the M54 in Shropshire into high-speed traffic – a lorry was hit and another was forced to swerve. The youngest offenders to be caught are two 9-year-old girls, who were filmed on CCTV throwing a brick off a footbridge over the M25 and through a car window. The pair, of course, weren’t old enough to stand prosecution.